James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  Jimmy had long ago learned that all gay men didn’t dress up like drag queens. He’d been around Hollywood long enough to know that several very macho figures of the silver screen, including Gary Cooper, had had a gay past.

  To him, Tracy was the most macho man on the screen, with a quiet masculinity that contrasted with the swagger of John Wayne.

  By 3:30PM, when Cukor still had not appeared on the terrace, Tracy suggested that he and Jimmy walk down the hill to Tracy’s cottage “for a little privacy.” Jimmy, of course, knew what he had in mind.

  Spencer Tracy, an anguished Catholic, appropriately cast as Father Flanagan, an influential priest specializing in the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents, in Boys Town (1938).

  As Jimmy would later recall to Rogers Brackett, he had never known a man who held his liquor as well as Tracy. His preferred beverage was scotch.

  Since Jimmy was hungry, he asked if he could go into the kitchen and whip up something for a late lunch. “Help yourself. She usually leaves some foodstuff for me.” Jimmy assumed “she” meant Hepburn.

  Tracy was right. The refrigerator was well-stocked, and included a roasted chicken. He took it out and sliced off some of the breast, which he later mixed up with some salad greens. He brought two heaping plates into the living room, where, to his surprise, Tracy devoured his share. “I haven’t eaten anything all day,” he said. “Sometimes, I can make it through an entire day relying only on liquid nourishment.”

  By 8PM, Jimmy became anxious to get on with the action, since he had made other plans for the evening.

  Jimmy knew what Tracy wanted, but the actor seemed reluctant, almost shy, to introduce the subject of sex. “Let’s go into the bedroom, Mr. Tracy,” he said.

  Tracy looked surprised, but rose from his armchair, and then plopped down onto the bed. Jimmy seemed to want to get the sex act over with and be on his way. In full view of Tracy, he stripped off his clothes and climbed onto the bed beside him.

  Suddenly, Tracy began to weep uncontrollably. “I don’t like who I am,” he sobbed. “I hate my life. That’s why I drink so much. To escape.”

  “I held him tightly, like a baby,” Jimmy later recalled to Brackett. “This strong character on the screen was like a helpless little boy. Since I knew what he wanted, I took his hand and placed it between my legs.”

  “His hand moved over to my groin, and then he began nibbling at my foreskin—that bit of skin fascinated him. Although he finally got around to taking the whole cock, it was clear to me, for some strange reason, that he was a devotee of foreskin.”

  After the sex act, both men fell asleep. Tracy took Jimmy in his arms. As he drifted off, he whispered, “Don’t leave me. Don’t ever leave me!”

  In the early morning hours, Tracy woke up and stumbled out of bed. Only a small lamp on the nightstand illuminated the room. He couldn’t seem to find his way to the bathroom, so finally, he gave up, pissing in the corner of the bedroom. Then he returned to the bed.

  Jimmy couldn’t go back to sleep, so he decided to leave. Very quietly, he got up and retrieved his clothing. In the living room, Tracy’s wallet was on the coffee table. It contained two one-hundred dollar bills and a few one- and ten-dollar bills. Jimmy took the two hundreds, leaving the remainder of the money for the actor, in case he needed it for his eventual migrations to the bank or perhaps to the studio.

  He never expected to see Tracy again. Nor did he want to. Only that morning, he’d read in Variety that Cukor had cast Anthony Perkins as Jean Simmons’ boyfriend in The Actress, leaving him to conclude that he wouldn’t be working on that picture with Tracy as its major star.

  Tracy was a sad, forlorn person, cursed with a depression that seemed to reside within him. It mirrored Jimmy’s own bouts of morbidity. He and Tracy did not belong together.

  Jimmy made his way up the hill to Cukor’s home, entering the open door that led to the kitchen. The Japanese houseboy was preparing breakfast for his boss.

  `The director was nowhere to be seen. Spotting Jimmy, the boy said, “Good morning, Mr. Dean fellow. Mr. Cukor asked me to give you a letter.” Then he handed him a letter that had been resting on the kitchen table. “Thanks,” Jimmy said. “I’ll read it later. Tell him I’m sorry he decided to cast Perkins instead of me.”

  En route to his penthouse, Jimmy still hadn’t read the letter. He was still thinking about Tracy, and something he’d said.

  Tracy had asked him, “Do you know what happens to old actors in Hollywood? What will happen to me one day? Me, as well as Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Bogie. Our only public appearances will be at funerals.”

  Was Walt Disney a Homosexual?

  “OH WALT, SAY IT ISN’T SO!”

  —MICKEY MOUSE

  Back at his penthouse, Jimmy read the note from Cukor, who apologized for having cast Anthony Perkins instead of himself in The Actress.

  “I want to make amends,” wrote Cukor. “If you’ll come over tonight, I’ll introduce you to one of the biggest names in Hollywood. I’ve already alerted him to the fact that you’d be ideal as the hero of one of his big-budget movies. More than anyone, this gentleman can make you a star.”

  Portrait of a Diva: Katharine Hepburn

  Arriving at eight o’clock that evening in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, Jimmy was ushered into Cukor’s living room as the director was bidding farewell to a very tense Katharine Hepburn.

  “Just because I have to fight for my independence as a woman, you’re against me—just like a man. Even Spence is on your side.”

  “My dearest darling Kate,” Cukor said. “We’ll shoot the scene tomorrow as I’ve set it up. You can’t overrule your director. Instead of objecting to everything I want, you should listen, for a change. It’ll do you good.”

  “You should be nice to me,” she said. “After all, I’m a star.”

  “You’re more than that,” Cukor said. “You’re a spoiled, rotten bitch.”

  Hepburn stormed out of the living room, brushing past Jimmy without a word.

  “Forgive that outburst,” Cukor said, apologetically. “Come on in and sit down beside me. I’ll have my boy get you a drink.”

  “She was really, really mad,” Jimmy said. “I’d be afraid of her.”

  “I’m about the only one who’ll stand up to her. When John Huston made The African Queen with her, he told me he feared that the movie-going public wouldn’t be able to tell Kate’s scaly skin from that of a crocodile.”

  Jimmy was shocked at such a harsh appraisal, but said nothing.

  “Is your producer friend here?” Jimmy asked, anxious to change the subject.

  “Don’t be impatient,” Cukor said. “He’ll be here soon. He’s a very busy man.”

  At 9PM, in walked Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse, Dumbo, Cinderella, Donald Duck, and Snow White. Although he knew very little about him, Jimmy recognized him at once. In the 1950s, very few members of the American public knew anything about the producer. Some biographers would later designate him as “Hollywood’s Prince of Darkness.”

  An anxiety-ridden, chain-smoking alcoholic and lifelong anti-Semite, Disney was also a special informant for the FBI in Hollywood, routing out communists and “subversive Jews” during the Joseph McCarthy era.

  According to dozens of sources, he was also a homosexual. After his death, he would be outed by several underground newspapers.

  Throughout his life, Disney was plagued with what one biographer called “his sexual inadequacies.” That might explain, if these rumors are true, what caused him to turn to virile young men to provide him with sexual pleasure, which he could not provide, except in rare instances, to women.

  Anti-semitic guardian of show-biz’ Family Values: Walt Disney

  Based on Disney’s fast appraisal of his body, Jimmy just assumed that the producer approved of him. “I think Jimmy here looks like a clean-cut, All-American boy,” Disney said to Cukor, right in front of Jimmy.

  He quickly responded, “Looks can b
e deceiving, Mr. Disney.”

  “A boy with spunk,” Disney said. “I like that.”

  During the first hour of their conversation, Jimmy realized that Disney and Cukor had a jocular but very competitive relationship. At one point, Cukor turned to Jimmy and said, “Ask Walt to tell you about his honeymoon with Lillian. She found out that he liked to look into garbage cans and watch maggots devour rotting meat. “

  “At least I wasn’t fired from Gone With the Wind because Clark Gable didn’t want a cocksucker directing him.”

  “Too late,” Cukor said. “I sucked Gable’s little cock back in 1929.”

  “Did Walt tell you that Leni Riefenstahl wasn’t Hitler’s favorite filmmaker? Walt was! Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was Der Führer’s favorite movie.”

  “No person in Hollywood can be blamed for the fan base he attracts,” Disney said, defensively.

  Before the two men took Jimmy upstairs, Disney seemed to want a final assurance from Cukor that Jimmy would be very discreet.

  “Please understand,” Disney said, lighting up another cigarette. “If word got out that I patronized hustlers, my empire might crumble. Mothers might not let their kids see my movies.”

  Jimmy was insulted. “Mr. Disney, I’m not a hustler. I’m an actor, and a god damn good one at that.”

  “I’m sure you are, dear boy,” Disney said to him.

  “Before their departure upstairs, Disney seemed to blame Cukor for hooking him up to the hustler scene to which he’d become addicted.

  As Cukor later told Jimmy, “Blaming me is like a drug addict blaming the dealer who got him hooked.”

  Perhaps to make him jealous and to torment him a bit, Jimmy later revealed to Brackett some of the most intimate details of his brief life as a hustler. He was particularly adept at bragging how he had become linked to the rich and famous without any assistance from Brackett’s connections.

  He didn’t exactly give a “blow-by-blow” encounter of the night he spent with Cukor and Disney, but he did claim that both men kept most of their clothes on. He had “every inch of my body devoured by ravenous mouths. I’ve never been so drained in my life.”

  When Brackett quizzed him about Disney possibly featuring him in one of his upcoming movies, Jimmy had to admit the truth: After those moments of passion, Cukor never returned any of his phone calls. Likewise, Disney never contacted him, and there is no record that Jimmy was ever considered for a role in one of Disney’s family-oriented films.

  ***

  William Kern, a journalist who wrote under the pseudonym “Bill Dakota,” was the editor of The Hollywood Star, a gossip tabloid that was a hot seller during the 1970s. Dakota seemed to have the inside scoop on anything transpiring within gay Hollywood.

  His most notorious edition (Volume 1, no. 4) appeared in 1976. It carried the red-letter, front-page headline: WALT DISNEY WAS HOMOSEXUAL—EDITOR REVEALS FACTS!

  When that paper hit the newsstands along Hollywood Boulevard, it outsold Playboy and every other publication. It is reasonable to say that the first major outing of Walt was the talk of the town at every dinner party and in every bar that night.

  The editor even went to a notary public and signed a sworn statement, replicated on that edition’s front page, that the events he revealed about Walt were true. The article revealed that he had been paid to have sex with Walt. Dakota’s experience with the creator of Mickey Mouse was given further credence by other men who testified to having had the same experience.

  Even though the term “outed” had not been coined at that time, Walt Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse, was officially “outed,” becoming one of the first of many stars—both male and female—who would be outed in the years to come. In the immediate aftermath of Walt’s death, the underground press in Hollywood—much of which was produced on old-fashioned mimeograph machines without a lot of design savvy—went into overdrive. Hustlers came forth and described the details of their paid encounters with Walt.

  Although the various sources derived from widely varied backgrounds, a pattern emerged. According to several of these allegations, Walt rarely, if ever, requested that the young man remove his clothes. “I was subjected to a quick blow-job, paid a hundred-dollar bill, and shown to the door as quickly as possible,” said hustler Ralph Ferguson. “For me, it was easy money. Walt was known in the hustler world as a good mark.”

  Over the years, insights into the marriage of Walt and his wife, Lillian, have remained largely a closely guarded secret. What she knew of her husband’s nocturnal activities, if anything, is not known. Obviously she might have been suspicious. Walt often didn’t come home at night. He used the excuse that he was working late at the studio and was sleeping over.

  He was rumored to have maintained different apartments in the Greater Los Angeles area, which he rented under assumed names. It was alleged that he entertained paid hustlers there. One of the many “male madams” of Hollywood supplied him with a discreet group of young men, often out-of-work actors.

  PUTTING ON A SHOW FOR

  Clifton Webb

  Jimmy placed a call to John Carlyle, that actor he’d had sex with at George Cukor’s home. He wanted to spend a night alone with Carlyle, but instead, he got a surprise invitation. Carlyle suggested that both of them meet that evening at Clifton Webb’s house for an eight o’clock dinner. The actor lived in a pink stucco house on Rexford Drive in Beverly Hills.

  Jimmy accepted the invitation with a sense of adventure, based on a vague idea of what was in store for him.

  A black manservant showed Jimmy into the house, directing him down the foyer to the living room, where Webb and Carlyle were already having drinks. Carlyle rose and hugged Jimmy, but Webb remained seated, extending his hand and holding Jimmy’s paw an extra-long time. “You’re everything John said you’d be,” Webb said, appraising him.

  He was impressed with the décor and taste of the house, which, Webb asserted, had once been owned by director Victor Fleming.

  Webb had launched his Broadway career as a singer-hoofer. He’d achieved screen fame portraying the dandified Waldo Lydecker in Gene Tierney’s Laura (1944), for which he was later nominated as a Best Supporting Actor.

  In the words of critic Barry Monush: “Webb was everybody’s favorite prissy snob—dapper, dryly critical of others, and oh-so-pleased with himself. He was usually raising a nose, looking down with superiority at some other, less confident character, and tossing off a witty bon mot or insult with the sting of a wasp.”

  Clifton Webb with Barbara Stanwyck in Titanic (1953)...Both of them were competing for Robert Wagner.

  Jimmy was surprised by the sudden appearance of an elegantly dressed woman who looked to be in her 80s. Webb said, “This is my beloved mother, Maybelle.”

  Jimmy found that her mannerisms, fluttering eyelids, and tantalizing lisp evoked an earlier part of the century. He also noticed that she wore far too much rouge, and that her dress appeared to have been fashionable in 1930.

  Over dinner, she did most of the talking, treating her son with an imperial hauteur, ordering what he could and could not eat. Apparently, in her heyday, she’d been a feisty, high-kicking dancer.

  She did not seem embarrassed by her son’s “auntie-like effeminacy” (Jimmy’s words). At one point, she told the table, “Many mothers with homosexual sons kick them out of the house. I would never do that. To me, the greatest loss a mother can suffer is when her son leaves the house to marry another woman.”

  “Maybelle, darling, you know I will never do that.”

  The purpose of the evening became all too clear after Webb escorted Maybelle up the stairs to bed. Carlyle whispered to him, “Clifton wants us to go to his bedroom and put on a show. He sometimes gives blow jobs, but mostly he’s a voyeur. Also, a director. He insists on directing the sex act.”

  “I’m short of cash,” Jimmy said.

  “He’ll give us $150 each, which is good because I need money for gas and rent, not to mention food.”


  “Okay, we’ll put on a show for the creep, and we’ll have some fun ourselves.”

  Later, when Jimmy described the night to Brackett, he left out most of the details, except to say, “John and I got so carried away that at one point, we forgot that Webb was in the room.”

  Over the next few weeks, Webb called Jimmy back on three different occasions without Carlyle. “He never took off his clothes, but the guy has a suction pump for a mouth,” Jimmy told Brackett.

  Apparently, Webb’s experience with Jimmy was frequently repeated with other young men for sale. Scotty Bowers, in Full Service, his exposé of underground Hollywood, wrote that he often supplied tricks for the veteran actor.

  Bowers recalled that Webb’s mother, Maybelle, fully understood what was happening whenever Webb headed for the bedroom with his beau du jour. “The mother would start behaving like a brooding, clucking hen and say, ‘Now, now, boys, don’t misbehave.’”

  Scotty Bowers, one of Hollywood’s most “connected” hustlers and pimps.

  Webb, with his man of the moment, usually spent fifteen or twenty minutes alone with him, and would then reappear. According to Bowers, “Maybelle liked me. She often scurried over to me and whispered in my ear, “Oh, Scotty, thank heavens for you, darling. You make my Clifton so happy, you know.”

  ***

  Webb became a mentor and great supporter of Jimmy’s film career. He even began to supply columnists with items about him. He spoke to Dorothy Kilgallen, an entertainment columnist in New York. She printed one of Jimmy’s first news items: